PAX and Socialist Realism: A Marriage of
Convenience?
The term ‘socpaxist realism’1 defines works by authors associated with the milieu o f Bolesław Piasecki2 in the years 1949-1956 (the so-called movement of socially progressive Catholics) and with the Dziś i Jutro} weekly that it published. The specificity of these works stemmed from the attempts at reconciliation of a religious world-view with full acceptance o f the Stalinist course taken by the authorities. Socpaxist authors keenly tapped into the concept of Catholic realism.4 The pos tulate o f describing the reality in its material and spiritual aspects was, however,
1 Socpaxist realism: a term describing a phenom enon specific to Polish literary life at
the time o f Stalinism consisting in the com bination o f the doctrine o f socialist realism w ith the Catholic world-view. It is external to the discourse o f the era and pejoratively loaded. See: D aria Mazur, ‘Realizm katolicki’ [Catholic realism], in: Słownik realizmu
socjalistycznego[Dictionary o f socialist realism], Zdzisław Łapiński, Wojciech Tomasik (eds.), Kraków: Universitas, 2004, p. 245-256; eadem, ‘Realizm socpaxowski - próba charakterystyki (refleksje nad “krytyką syzyfową”)’ [Socpaxist realism - an attem pt
at characterization (reflections on ‘Sisyphean criticism’)], in: Socrealizm. Fabuły - ko
m unikaty - ikony[Socialist realism. Storylines - com m unications - icons], Krzysztof Stępnik, Magdalena Piechota (eds.), Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-
Skłodowskiej, 2006, pp. 547-560; eadem, Realizm socpaxowski[Socpaxist realism],
Bydgoszcz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, 2013. Michał Głowiński was the one to apply the term ‘socpaxist’ in reference to Zygm unt Lichniak, a lead
ing critic from D ziś i Jutro.See: idem, ‘Powieść na m iarę naszych czasów (Obywatele
Kazimierza Brandysa)’ [A novel for our times (‘Citizens’ by Kazimierz Brandys)], in:
idem, Rytuał i demagogia. Trzynaście szkiców o sztuce zdegradowanej[Ritual and dema-
goguery. Thirteen sketches on degraded art], Warszawa: O pen, 1992, p. 52.
2 Editors’ note:Bolesław Piasecki (1915-1979), politician, activist o f pre-w ar extreme nationalist and anti-Sem itic organizations. After the war, he cooperated w ith the com m unist authorities as the organizer and leader o f the PAX Association.
3 Editors’ note: D ziś i Jutro(Today and Tomorrow) was published in the years 1945-1956. In 1955, it was entered on the list o f press publications banned by the Catholic Church.
4 See: Stefania Skwarczyńska, Wstęp do nauki o literaturze[Introduction to literary stud
ies], vol. 1, Warszawa: PAX, 1954, p. 109; eadem , ‘“Literatura katolicka” jako term in w nauce o literaturze’ [‘Catholic literature’ as a term in literary studies], in: eadem,
Studia i szkice literackie[Literary studies and sketches], Warszawa: PAX, 1953, pp. 9-20; eadem , ‘Zagadnienie oceny literatury katolickiej. Próba ujęcia zagadnienia’ [The issue
pushed to the background, while the m ain emphasis was on the assumption that a literary vision should express a critical attitude to systems that abused social classes, nations or races.5 The crystallization of this trend was fundamentally aided by the doctrine o f socialist realism.6 It was the doctrine of choice in specifying the tasks o f literature, the social role of writers, the choice of themes and motifs. Socialist realist poetics m oderated the creations rooted in the concept of co-existence of spiritual and Marxist world-views (what was called ‘plurality of world-views’7) as the attitude sanctioning the political position of Piasecki’s group.
The activities of the circle ed after 1945 around the pre-war leader of the radi cal right (ONR Falanga)8 were geared toward participation in the economic and political life and contributing to shaping the binding model of culture. The deal that Bolesław Piasecki struck w ith an NKVD general Ivan Serov following his arrest in 1944 obliged him to full cooperation with the communists, aiding the disintegration of the Polish Catholic Church and elimination of the underground independence movement.9 The consent of com m unist authorities to the publica tion o f a magazine and to the establishment o f a lay Catholic association came then at a price of nudging the clergy and the Catholic com m unity to cooperate with the regime, of debilitating the AK10 circles and of propagating the alliance with the USSR.11 The view put forward in Dziś i Jutro (a weekly published from
o f evaluating Catholic literature. A n attem pt at definition], in: Studia i szkice literackie, op. cit., pp. 21-47.
5 See: Stefania Skwarczyńska, ‘Z agadnienie.. op. cit., p. 38.
6 See: D aria Mazur, ‘Realizm katolicki’, op. cit.; eadem, ‘Realizm socpaxow ski.. op. cit.
7 Bolesław Piasecki, ‘Zagadnienie znaczenia katolików we Froncie Narodowym’ [The
issue o f significance o f Catholics in the N ational Front], in: idem , Kierunki. 1945-1960 [Directions. 1945-1960], Warszawa: PAX, 1981, p. 158. See: ibid., pp. 134-136. 8 Editors’ note: O bóz Narodowo-Radykalny Falanga (N ational Radical Cam p Falanga),
an illegal organization established in 1935, following the split o f the N ational Radical Camp, w hose leader was Bolesław Piasecki. It propagated a fascist program m e.
9 See: Andrzej Friszke, Andrzej Paczkowski, “‘Chcę współpracować”. Bolesława Piaseckiego
m em oriały w ięzienne’ [‘I w ant to cooperate’. Prison m em oirs o f Bolesław Piasecki],
Tygodnik Powszechny, no. 15, 2007, p. 18. Editors’ note: the same issue contains a col
lection of materials from the archives of Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (The Institute of National Remembrance) concerning Bolesław Piasecki, selected by the Editors of the current volume. The title o f the article is ‘Z teczki Piaseckiego’ (‘From Piaseckis file’). 10 Editors’ note: A rm ia Krajowa (the H ome Army) was the largest underground Polish
m ilitary organization during W orld W ar II. Its allegiance was to the Polish G overn m ent-in-Exile based out o f London.
11 Barbara Fijałkowska, Partia wobec religii i Kościoła w PRL [Party vis-à-vis religion and the Church in Peoples Republic of Poland], vol. 1, Olsztyn: Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski,
November 1945 by Piaseckis group) was dominated by the element of political agitation; the religious factor played a secondary role. It is difficult to find in the socpaxist works any traces of the declared intent to chrystianize the socialist sys tem, a mission which, besides the alleged role o f a m ediator between the Party and the Church, was keenly cited by the leader of this movement as a justification of his ambiguous position.12 This attitude guaranteed com m unist concessions to the group, which dubbed itself a movement of socially progressive Catholics - this term was m eant to inflate their influence and to emphasize compliance with the trend of progressivism (one of the sources of the Stalinist concept of a new man). Piasecki s representatives (three deputies) entered the Sejm following the 1947 elections and, from March of that year, commenced the publication of the Słowo Powszechne13 daily. ‘Field units of the editorial office, as well as the economic background in the form of INCO-Veritas m anufacturing enterprises, were subsequent steps on the road toward the establishment of the PAX Association, finally constituted in 1951’.14 Piaseckis group was involved in the seizure o f the Caritas Association15 from the church in 1950, and participated in the witch-hunt for priests charged in Stalinist show trials, ‘which lent credibility to the communist repressions of Catholics’.16 Following the 1953 takeover of the Tygodnik Powszechny17 weekly, which had been
1999, pp. 83-85; Andrzej Friszke, Przystosowanie i opór. Studia z dziejów PRL [Adapta tion and resistance. A study o f the history of PRL], Warszawa: Biblioteka Więzi, 2007, pp. 42-49; Zygmunt Zieliński, Kościół w Polsce 1944-2002 [The Catholic Church in Poland 1944-2002], Radom: Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne, 2003, pp. 74-80; idem, ‘Komu służył PAX?’ [W hom did PAX serve?], in: Komu służył PAX?, Warszawa: PAX, 2008, pp. 51-92.
12 See: Barbara Fijałkowska, op. cit., pp. 84-85.
13 Editors’ note: Słowo Powszechne (C om m on Word) was published in the years 1947- 1997. It declared itself a Catholic publication, although it was never officially acknowl edged by the C hurch authorities as their m outhpiece. It played a heinous role in the anti-Sem itic persecutions o f 1968.
14 Zygm unt Zielinski, Kościół..., op. cit., p. 75.
15 Editors’ note: The Caritas Association is an international Catholic charity organization. In Poland, it was controlled by the com m unist authorities from 1949.
16 Ibid., p. 79.
17 Editors’ note: Tygodnik Powszechny (The Catholic Weekly), published in Krakow since 1945. In 1956 it was reclaim ed by its legitimate editorial team. It enjoyed great au thority in Poland, as the m ost prom inent magazine independent o f the authorities o f the People’s Republic o f Poland. It has consequently represented the m oderate, open’ fraction o f Polish Catholicism.
shut down by the authorities, the PAX Association monopolized the publication of Catholic or, better said, paxist press.18
The ideological and political marriage of Catholics from Piasecki s group with Marxists might appear contradictory. However, opinions voiced by journalists close to the ONR19 in the 1930s attest to a congruence of their world-views and m ethods with elements of ideology and practice Marxists exhibited in Poland after World War II. Jan Józef Lipski20 distinguishes the ideological and political assumptions o f Katolickie państwo narodu polskiego (‘The Catholic state of the Polish nation’) postulated by Bepists (this nam e derives from the initials o f their leader):
1) full concentration of power, both in state and social life; 2) wielded by the state au thorities; 3) steered by the monoparty (Political Organization of the Nation [Organizacja Polityczna Narodu]); 4) hierarchically organized to model military organizations, with a chief at the helm; 5) availing itself of state coercion; 6) with a binding economic and social plan; 7) legitimizing itself with the only right ideology and the historical mission of the nation; 8) with the support of the nation.21
It is clear that this concept corresponded with the political and social reality that prevailed in Poland of the Stalinist times. One of the significant features of Bepists’ attitude was their approval of various totalisms. They accepted the nationalistic, hierarchical tendency with a hinge of anti-Semitism’22 of Stalinism. They praised Hitler’s state as one that was ‘m odern, future-oriented, based on dogmatic ideology and violence, hierarchical, nationalistic, anti-Semitic, imperialistic’.23 Totalitarian isms, of the Soviet and Hitler’s breed, were based on the authoritative, anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, anti-Semitic elements and on the collectivist ideology.24 François Furet brings up the com m on denom inator that was the object of particular fascination of the Bepists who strove to introduce a iunctim between the Church and politics:
18 See: ibid., p. 80.
19 Editors’ note: O NR (O bóz Narodowo-Radykalny - National-Radical Cam p) was an extrem e nationalist and anti-Sem itic organization established in 1934. B anned by the authorities o f pre-w ar Poland.
20 Editors’ note: Jan Józef Lipski (1926-1991) was a literary historian, publicist, political activist. O ne of the m ost prom inent figures o f Polish anti-com m unist opposition after 1956 and a successor o f the Polish non-com m unist leftist traditions.
21 Jan Józef Lipski, Katolickie państwo narodu polskiego [The Catholic state o f the Polish nation], London: Aneks, 1994, p. 27.
22 Ibid., p. 40.
23 Ibid., p. 40. See: Szymon Rudnicki, Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny. Geneza i działalność [National Radical Camp. Genesis and activity], Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1985, pp. 264- 265, 328.
‘Bolshevism and National Socialism shared a religion of power, the most openly professed in the world. To conquer and retain power, any means were good 25 The issue o f power, however, does not constitute a separate, autonom ous the matic thread in the works produced in the vein of socpaxist realism; it is, on the other hand, used contextually in reference to such vital matters as work or combat ing the class enemy. Literary examples o f depicting these phenom ena represent three them atic spheres. The first two fit into the concept o f paxist bequests to the com m unist regime, whereas the last attests to the political aspirations o f the Dziś
i Jutro milieu and to the laying o f foundations for the acceptance of its representa
tives by the authorities. The first thematic sphere feeds into the vision of reality largely founded upon the ‘security officials’.26 Watching over the socialist order is the role of Security Office (UB) and members of the militia. These tropes were m ost often taken up in socpaxist prose (Cierpkie Winogrona (‘Sour grapes’) by Mateusz Żurawiec (real name: Zygmunt Lichniak); Plebania z magnoliami (‘Pres bytery with magnolias’) by Stanisław Grochowiak; Na przełaj (‘Running free’) by Irena Sobocka; Dzieci i bagaże (‘Children and luggage’) by Zbyszko Bednorz). The second them atic sphere furnishes the negative images of emigration and o f the discredited London government, so as to diminish the authority o f émigré leaders in the Polish society, which was a feature typical also of socialist realism. Janina Kolendo’s novel Szukając drogi (‘Searching for the way’) exemplifies this tendency. The main heroine, a Catholic named Lena, during her stay in London goes through the process of acquiring ideological consciousness and grows to understand the necessity of a cooperation between Catholics and Marxists in building socialism. Works of poetry, on the other hand, were prim arily concerned with shaping the vision o f W estern states as synonyms of the enemy and of evil, in line with the rhetoric of a ‘fight against im perialism ’.27 The third them atic sphere has to do with ‘partyness’ as a constitutive com ponent o f the socialist realist doctrine and as an element im bued in the contem porary depiction o f authorities rendered in
25 François Furet, The Passing o f an Illusion: The Idea o f Comm unism in the Twentieth
Century,trans. D eborah Furet, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 191. See: Jan Józef Lipski, op. cit., pp. 81-111.
26 Wojciech Tomasik, ‘Towarzyszy z Bezpieczeństwa obraz’ [The image of com rades from
security], in: Słownik realizmu socjalistycznego,op. cit., p. 360.
27 W łodzim ierz Bolecki, ‘Emigracji obraz’ [The image of em igration], in: Słownik reali
zm u socjalistycznego,op. cit., p. 58. These m otifs are present in the poetic works of authors such as Mateusz Żurawiec, Wacław Olszewski, Zdzisław Łączkowski, Maciej Józef Kononowicz, Józef Szczawiński, Mikołaj Bieszczadowski. See: D aria Mazur, Re
literature. Prose of the socpaxist trend reveals the authors’ inclinations toward certain modifications of the category of partyness, as manifested by introducing Party-affiliated characters who are characterized and act in such a way as to sug gest links with the Dziś i Jutro circles and with its characteristic political attitude. Such literary devices influenced the protagonists of such novels as Janina Kolendos
Szukając drogi or Mateusz Żurawiecs Cierpkie winogrona and of the short stories
by W anda Chylicka (for example Antyki (‘Antiques’)). These protagonists represent the new intelligentsia - vigorous professionals who give work their best and who, at the same time, are ardent propagators o f the ‘plurality of world-views’ of the socialist system.
The scene in which two officials of the Security Office pay a visit to Father Lubinia’s presbytery in the 3rd part o f Żurawiecs triptych entitled Cierpkie winog
rona, which takes place shortly after the war in the Recovered Territories, contains
a series of elements ascribed to the stereotypical image of Security Office func tionaries in socialist realist works. In line with the convention, the author covers all tracks which could lead the reader toward the drastic associations with the ap paratus of repression through which the new system was violently implemented. The officials, who have arrived in search of a secretary of Germ an background by the name of Boszke, are depicted as good rangers, enforcing the law with patience, without any negative emotions. ‘The image of “security comrades” is built using one of two m ethods in the literature of 1949-1955. The first consists in discredit ing the stereotypical snoop/thug’,28 whereas the latter is on constructing an image which could radically change the society’s attitude by being likeable. In these works, negative preconceptions about law enforcement are confronted with portrayals of its representatives as immaculate people devoted to their tough jobs, which are to build social trust and to strengthen the message that the commonly held pejorative opinion of Security Office officials is mistaken.
Żurawiec availed of both these methods in Cierpkie winogrona - he emphasized the cool politeness, the fear, the emotional anxiety and sadness of people who hap pened to witness the visit at the presbytery (Father Lubinia and his housemaid). The priest is afraid that it is him who is going to be arrested. However, one short conversation with the visitors dissipates his fears. The author thus attem pted to discredit the prejudices and to propagate the thesis that the innocent m ust not be afraid of the punishing hand o f the People’s authority. Functionaries in Żurawiecs novel exhibit features which are typical of this type of characters in works of so cialist realism but, similarly to other works of the Stalinist period - they are not
central figures. Wojciech Tomasik writes about the socialist realist renditions of comrades from the Security Office:
these are people whose faces reflect exhaustion (yellowish complexion, sunk-in cheeks, wrinkle-ridden foreheads), yet this does not dull their charm [...]. There are some young people across all ranks, but experienced Party activists, for whom employment in Security is a complement of their exemplary biographies, dominate.25
And so Boszke, who collaborated with Werwolf and is the father o f Lukaschek, leader o f a diversion and sabotage gang, is being searched for by two Security func tionaries of different ages. They are both characterized by restraint, patience, effi ciency, focus on the task and politeness toward Father Lubinia, whom they address smiling. The narrative commentary: ‘the younger one flashed a sharp, strangely experienced smile’30 is to emphasize the burden o f responsibility carried by the functionaries of the system and the importance of the cases they handle. In social ist realist literature, employees of the Security Office are, ‘akin to miners, shipyard workers or peasants - participants of the social distribution o f tasks. Even more, they are the people entrusted with the most difficult jobs’.31 Literary creations suggest that functionaries of the Security Office are not privileged as representatives of the authority, but rather are the guards of the system, who bear a heavy and dangerous burden. This feature is also highlighted by Irena Sobocka in her novel Na przełaj (‘Running free’), set in the Recovered Territories. The character o f a young militia man, who is killed during the arrest of looters, is a telling example o f a Promethean sacrifice. His death initiates the internal transformation o f Honorata, an ideologi cally unconscious village girl who, after changing social circles, becomes a shock worker. The literary embodiments of the representatives of Security Office fuse a certain missionary element with the portrayal of their activities as hard daily labour, so widespread in the socialist system. In Cierpkie winogrona Żurawiec employed a lexical device that was popular in socialist realistic literature, namely: he used .a euphemism to describe the investigative operations carried out by the Security Of fice (search of Boszke’s room). The phrase: ‘Formalities were taken care of by the younger one’32 suggests these actions were no different to an office job. Wojciech Tomasik wrote that the m anner of speaking of the characters representing the Se curity Office in socialist realist works of literature as well as the lexical resources
29 Ibid., pp. 362-363.
30 Mateusz Żurawiec, ‘Cierpkie winogrona’ [Sour grapes], in: idem, Cierpkie winogrona, Warszawa: PAX, 1954, p. 297.
31 Wojciech Tomasik, op. cit., p. 362. 32 Mateusz Żurawiec, op. cit., p. 298.
relating to their job reveal a tendency to value them positively; ‘the reader is given a clue that the institution of violence belongs to the sphere of normality’,33 which is associated with the semantic field of work.
Infiltration and disintegration of Polish émigré circles was a significant target of the com m unist intelligence services. These were accompanied by propaganda actions in the country, which aimed to discredit the government in exile. It was proclaimed that its m em bers were
fascists from the [National Party], ONR and Sanation, extreme reactionaries, American spies, former collaborators. All of them, in the name of hostility toward new Poland, get involved with reactionary forces in America, forces that crave a new war and that want Poland to lose Western Territories. They are also ready to cooperate with neo-Hitlerism in Germany.34
The image of the exiles that the main character of Szukając drogi encounters in Great Britain is constructed upon the fixed repertoire of communist propaganda. Janina Kolendo informs the readers that a ministerial job in the government in exile is a lucrative position, that the younger generation is losing touch with their Polish roots and that skilled workmen, instead of supporting their fatherland in restoration, prefer demeaning jobs in England. Two episodes in this book served the purpose of accumulating negative assessments o f the leaders in exile. The first is Lena’s conver sation with her former history teacher, which suggests that she visited her ex-pupil as a Western spy, to wheedle information about Poland out of her and to convince her to stay abroad. At this point Lena reminisces about her im prisonm ent at the concentration camp and makes a reference to the threat of imperialism, in the face of which the status o f an exile means, in her opinion, approval for pushing for war:
Did you know that small children scream horribly when they are burned? And did you know that these screams are not identical? You can tell voices apart. Listening to them can be an occupation you just cannot escape. You have to listen, you have to hear. Do you understand? There are some who want to force new people to keep listening. And others, who want to help them. But others do not.35
The second episode meant to put the London government into disrepute is the con versation between Lena and general Wiśniowski, Anders’s36 chief of staff. The heroine
33 Wojciech Tomasik, op. cit., p. 363.
34 A ndrzej Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji [The political life o f émigrés], Warszawa: Biblioteka Więzi, 1999, p. 222.
35 Janina Kolendo, Szukając drogi [Searching for the way], Warszawa, 1952, p. 58. 36 Editors’ note: W ładysław A nders (1892-1970), Polish general and politician. C reator
and C om m ander-in-C hief o f Polish A rm ed Forces in the USSR. After the war, one of the leaders o f Polish émigré circles.
accuses the émigré circles of fuelling the activities of the armed underground in the country and of involving young, politically unaware people in crime: ‘It comes at a price, for sure, but not a high one, since the m oney is not theirs and the lives are not theirs, they’re o f a certain num ber of people whom they call hicks’.37 Discrediting the post-Yalta emigration and what the communist propaganda referred to as self- appointed’ government came hand in hand with ascribing all kinds of pathologies to it. ‘The West - from the point of view of communists - was a grave, contagious disease, and so each return required a lengthy process of “treatm ent”.’38 This is why Kolendo portrays Lena’s stay in London as destructive to her health, as contacts with the exiles give her fever and weaken her. Return to Poland, on the other hand, marks the beginning of her recovery. The author o f Szukając drogi also employed a m otif connected with the figure of Stanisław Mikołajczyk (Deputy Prime Minister and minister in the Provisional Government o f National Unity) who, following falsified elections in 1947, at risk of imprisonment, was forced to flee to the USA. The com m ent of one of the characters in the book ‘He messed up big time and ran off’39 corresponds with the image of this leader of the Polish People’s Party (PSL), who opposed the regime, proliferated by the official propaganda that portrayed him as a traitor and coward.
The socpaxist trend, similarly to socialist realist works, articulated ‘instrum en tal understanding of tendentiousness and engagement of literature’,40 but it does stand apart for its characteristic modification of the postulate of partyness, imitated after the Soviet theoreticians. Melania Kierczyńska professed: ‘Party orientation is exhibited by every writer whose works serve these objectives (i.e. objectives of the working class)’.41 Some of the socpaxist works demonstrate not only that their authors followed the socialist realist doctrine in their understanding of the edu cational function of art and that they exhibited the ideologically correct attitude revealed in presenting the battle between the new order and the old, but also that they tried to further the particular interests of the Dziś i Jutro group with the aid of the category of partyness. The issue of power and of the new political system gives rise to the dom ination of a specific type of character, who had typically an intel ligentsia profession, such as writer (Mateusz Żurawiec Cierpkie winogrona; Jerzy
37 Janina Kolendo, ibid., p. 62. 38 W łodzim ierz Bolecki, op. cit., p. 59. 39 Janina Kolendo, op. cit., p. 87.
40 D orota Tubielewicz M attsson, ‘Partyjność’ [Partyness], in: Słownik realizmu socjali
stycznego, op. cit., p. 178.
41 Melania Kierczyńska, Spór o realizm. Szkice krytyczne [The realism controversy. Critical essays], Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1951, p. 188.
Krzysztoń Portret rewolucjonisty (‘Portrait of a revolutionist’) and Śmierć Czajld
Harolda (‘Death of Childe Harold’); Jan Dobraczyński Drzewa chodzące (‘Walking
trees’)), artist - sculptor and art historian (Janina Kolendo Szukając drogi), journalist (Stanisław Grochowiak Plebania z magnoliami, Mateusz Żurawiec Cierpkie winogro
na), doctor (Jan Dobraczyński Drzewa chodzące), teacher (Zbyszko Bednorz Dzieci i bagaże; D anuta Kucharska-Zarzycka W krakowskiej kamienicy (‘At a tenem ent
house in Krakow’), engineer (Jerzy Krzysztoń Śmierć Czajld Harolda, Irena Sobocka
Na przełaj). These characters deviate from the standard conceptions of a hero for the
new times - of a worker - and yet they fit right into the convention of presenting the so-called new intelligentsia, constitutive of socialist realism. Socpaxist works operate with a vision o f proletariats dictatorship, in which representatives of this social group take a prom inent place. An im portant role within this trend is played by tropes related to role models, which are clear allusions to the representatives of the PAX circle. The protagonists of Cierpkie winogrona by Mateusz Żurawiec or of
Szukając drogi by Janina Kolendo, as intelligentsia embodiments of the so-called
socially progressive Catholics, were designed to sow the seeds of beliefs held by the group linked to Dziś i Jutro in the minds of their readers and to legitimize the politi cal line pursued by Bolesław Piasecki. These characters share the biographical model of Catholic intellectuals which, following the period of pre-war youth marked by the lack of awareness of social and political matters (this was to efface the undesirable connotations of the PAX group with the interwar ONR Falanga), then goes through a trying time of building experiences in the fight against the occupant, and finally reaches the stage of ideological development, ripe with understanding for the need to get involved in systemic transformations on the side of Marxists.
This is the biography of Bogucki, the main character of Antyki,41 from Wanda Chylicka’s collection of short stories entitled Splątane korzenie. He embodies the political aspirations o f the Dziś i Jutro milieu; as an employee of the M inistry of Culture and Art he represents the new authorities. The short story was to present the postulated cooperation between Catholics and Marxists. The trope of mutual interest of two Ministry employees relates to the romantic background of the novel
Szukając drogi. The author concentrates on the convergent elements of life atti
tudes exhibited by this pair; she indicates two equally valid personal role models - Bogucki, a religious, progressive intellectual of peasant origins and M arta Jules, who broke all connections with her native bourgeois environm ent (she rejected an inheritance) and who, as a young working widow involved in building the new
42 W anda Chylicka, ‘A ntyki’ [Antiques], in: eadem , Splątane korzenie [Tangled roots], Warszawa; PAX, 1953, pp. 130-149.
system, believes in Marxist dialectics. The couple is marked by altruism, enthusiasm, youthfulness and zeal for collective work.
The creation of the world presented in short stories from Chylickas collection
Splątane korzenie, whose core are themes related to intelligentsia, is devoid o f the
element of partyness, so constitutive of socialist realism, in the sense that Stalinist literary criticism gave to this category. The narrator does not mention Party activists, councils or meetings. The reader is unable to tell with certainty whether any of the positive characters is a Party member; they express views which are compliant with Marxist ideology and they act as if Party membership determined their choices, but nominally they are not characterized as representatives o f the Party. Could this be negligence on the authors part? This lack reveals the source o f the mechanism of creation referred to as replacement, employed by Chylicka. She performed a double manipulation in painting the literary picture o f the intelligentsia. She adopted the socialist realist tactic of unmasking this group as hostile toward the system or as ideologically imm ature and, at the same time, she shaped the vision of the reality in such a way that the role of catalysts of change fell to those characters which the reader could associate with the intelligentsia environment of Dziś i Jutro. Dropping progressive Catholic intellectuals into the new society, suggesting their ideologi cal positions identified with Party representatives, was to win real strategic space for Piasecki s camp within the dictatorship o f the proletariat. These works served, similarly to the works produced by socialist realism, the objective of damaging the intelligentsia ethos while, at the same time, propagating the attitude of ‘licensed Catholics’.43 The negative elements of the intellectuals’ image, juxtaposed with the advantages o f the educated specialist - a socialist builder, fit into the socpaxist strategy, the ideological and political battle for participation in power. The m anipu lation which consisted of presenting the so-called socially progressive Catholics as the dom inant group, of putting them in the role of those spearheading the system changes, was a result of the ambition that was typical to the environment of Dziś i
Jutro - the ambition to act as ideological leaders and the political elite, whereas in
Poland this position had been traditionally occupied by the intelligentsia.
Antoni Dudek and Grzegorz Pytel diagnose the political position attained by the leader of PAX as follows:
43 The term employed by Andrzej Micewski in reference to his form er colleagues from PAX Association. See: idem, Katolicy w potrzasku. Wspomnienia z peryferii polityki [Catholics entrapped. M em oirs from the peripheries o f politics], Warszawa: Polska Oficyna Wydawnicza BGW, 1993, p. 26.
Piaseckis tragedy was that both at the beginning and at the end of his life he was just as far from the fundamental tool of turning his plans into reality, that is from power. [...] On his deathbed, Piasecki could only be certain of one thing - he had managed to build an empire. It was not a state empire, indeed, but it would not be an exaggeration to call PAX, along with its numerous annexes, a state within a state. PAX was a unique phenom enon not only on the Polish scale, but also on the scale of the entire communist camp.44
Transi. Maja Jaros
44 A ntoni Dudek, G rzegorz Pytel, Bolesław Piasecki. Próba biografii politycznej [Bolesław Piasecki. A n attem pt at a political biography], London: Aneks, 1990, pp. 323-324.
